Americans built their most famous monuments in Washington — the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, the Lincoln Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknowns. But the nation’s capital doesn’t have a monopoly on tributes to the dead.

An Arlington family flies a flag every day to honor the 9/11 fallen. A Garland firefighter spends months making 343 wooden crosses to honor each firefighter who died on Sept. 11, 2001. A private school in Dallas adds a stained-glass window to its chapel to commemorate the day.

Since 9/11, people across Dallas-Fort Worth have created memorials that can be seen and touched. Much like a simple headstone, we believe these monuments prevent a tragic event from fading into a foggy memory or, even worse, evaporating altogether.

Over and over, you hear the same comments from those who create the monuments: We must remember. It’s a place to go, a quiet place to reflect. It brings closure. We show people up there in New York that people down here in Texas are with them.

A donation of our labor or the sacrifice of time and money seem like the least we can do when so many people died in a war no one knew we were fighting.

“God laid it on my heart to do something,” said Garland firefighter Aron Saffell, who built the crosses and displayed them in neat rows next to his fire station.

Then again, why do we want to remember? Why be so determined to etch the gruesome 9/11 facts in our minds? Our revered athletes remember victories and forget defeats. Surgeons honor lives saved and put the dead behind them.

Ralph Isenberg, an Oak Cliff businessman and collector of9/11 art, has a theory.

“The only way we can prevent these things from reoccurring,” he said, “is to be constantly reminded of what happened.”

Eight flags

One theme emerges over and over when people describe how they felt on 9/11: devastated, then angry, and finally, determined to do something positive for America.

Michael and JoAnn Boniol chose the simple symbolism of a fluttering American flag in front of their Arlington home. Every day since 9/11, they’ve put it up in the morning and taken it down at night.

“It was an outward visual thing that might give people a little hope,” said JoAnn Boniol, a retired preschool teacher. “My husband is adamant about doing it.”

They buy their flags at the hardware store and make sure they were made in the U.S.A. Cotton-blend flags hold up better than the shiny polyester versions.

When the flags start fraying, the Boniols give them to the Boy Scouts, who know how to properly retire the banner. They are now on their eighth flag since 9/11.

“The only feeling I have about 9/11 is that we all came together as a nation,” said Michael Boniol, a pharmacist. “Nobody was rich or poor. We seem to have gotten away from that.

“I want to be one country, with everybody seeing themselves as Americans and doing everything for America.”

A window

The Rev.Michael Harmuth was serving as a chaplain for the Dallas division of the FBI on Sept. 11, 2001.

After the terrorist attack, the Episcopal priest spent eight days in New York City. He did morgue duty and ministered to rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero, where everything was gray. There was no other color.

“They would bring in families to see the site where their loved ones were killed,” he recalled. “There was a memorial set up with teddy bears, and I remember thinking how important it was that those bears were there.”

When Harmuth returned to Dallas, he joined other mourners across North Texas in trying to determine what might make an appropriate 9/11 remembrance. He was a chaplain at Episcopal School of Dallas and enjoyed working with children.

A stained-glass “mourning” window in the school’s All Saints Chapel began taking shape in his mind. He began working with local artist Nancy Rebal on the design.

When it was unveiled in September 2003, the window became the first permanent 9/11 memorial in Dallas.

In vivid colors, the top panel presents side-by-side depictions of the Christian cross, the Jewish Star of David and the crescent moon and star of Islam. A middle panel shows two vertical lights to represent the twin towers that fell in New York. In a bottom panel, a child clutches a teddy bear.

“The teddy bear was an important element because children are always there,” Harmuth said. “And we also had a mouse wearing a fireman’s hat.”

Harmuth, now 74, is retired from full-time ministry. He serves as “grandfather chaplain” in ESD’s lower school. A boxer dog named Eve is the assistant chaplain. They love spending time in the chapel.

“It’s a place to go and the kids are all comfortable there,” he said.

Solidarity

Richard Lasky, Lewisville’s fire chief for 11 years, effortlessly runs through the 9/11 numbers most meaningful to him.

“I lost 11 friends and I knew 41 of the 343 firefighters who died in 9/11,” he said. “I attended nine funerals in five days.”

Like many of his colleagues, Lasky is a firefighter down to the marrow in his bones. In addition to running his department, he lectures all over the country on firefighting-related subjects, and he writes regularly for Fire Engineering magazine.

“I forged a lot of relationships over the years,” he said.

When Lasky and his staff decided to create a 9/11 memorial, they used their connections to obtain a steel beam from one of the collapsed towers in New York. The only rule for the material was that it could not be used to make money — no chopping it up into key rings or selling pieces on eBay.

A big chunk of the beam became the centerpiece for a memorial at the main fire station on North Valley Parkway. A flagstone patio and benches encircled by flowers and shrubs provide a private venue for reflection.

“People to this day come here to pray and leave flowers,” Lasky said. “It’s a place our guys can go without traveling far, and we believe it brings some closure to people here in North Texas.”

Lasky, now 50, said he believes 9/11 strengthened us.

“We are better as a country,” he said, “and better at disaster preparedness than we have ever been.”

Flight Crew Memorial

Shirley Hall, a veteran flight attendant, has flown for 32 years. After 9/11, she watched the nonstop media coverage and it struck her that the flight crews on the four ill-fated flights were the real first responders.

“Not to take anything away from those lost in the towers or the Pentagon or the firefighters or police, but it seemed like we got lost in the hubbub,” Hall said.

So she and some friends set out to raise money and find a location for the 9/11 Flight Crew Memorial, to honor the 33 pilots and flight attendants who lost their lives.

They found a plot of land near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Grapevine. The bronze sculpture depicts a pilot, a co-pilot, a female flight attendant, a male flight attendant, and a little girl who represents their passengers.

“We are a brotherhood, much like firefighters and police officers see themselves,” Hall said. “We offer our passengers a drink and a snack, but what a lot of people don’t see is that we spend many of our holidays and weekends in the air with people other than our families.”

The memorial was dedicated July 4, 2008. Passengers on flights arriving at D/FW from the north can see the memorial, now a city park, from the right side of the aircraft.

“It’s an impressive sight,” Hall said.

Defiance

Ralph Isenberg is not a shy guy. In 2009, he fulfilled a dream by erecting an impressive 23-foot-tall memorial to 9/11.

The sculpture, created by artist Jim Gallucci, stands about five yards away from the Bank Tower at Oak Cliff on Zang Boulevard.

Isenberg co-owns and manages the tower. He said its façade reminds him of the United Nations building in New York, often cited as a potential target of terrorists.

“I put the sculpture right up against the building,” he said. “To me, that represents bold-faced defiance.”

Isenberg, 59, collects 9/11 art. A vault in the tower’s basement is filled with paintings, posters and sculptures. He probably owns one of the world’s largest collections of Statue of Liberty art.

But the Gallucci sculpture is the centerpiece of his collection. It includes several tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center after 9/11.

The piece features a revolving gate doorway flanked by two vertical beams that represent the twin towers. Square, flat pieces of steel, representing debris, appear to be falling to the ground. The sculpture’s base is shaped like the Pentagon.

Isenberg said Gallucci is working on a much larger companion piece. The completed work will be titled “The Gates.” And Isenberg hopes they can be displayed in a prominent place somewhere in Dallas.

“How we handle our loss,” he said, “is equally important as the loss itself.”